


the long way home

by chidorinnn



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Angst, Depression, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Panic Attacks, when you just want your friends to feel loved and supported but your charisma stat sucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 05:17:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21350866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chidorinnn/pseuds/chidorinnn
Summary: There’s more to Yusuke’s new living conditions, though — of course there is.The first, perhaps the most important thing, is that Yusuke’s ability to continue living there free of charge is contingent on his scholarship. What Yusuke doesn’t say is that that scholarship can be taken away as easily as it had been given, should he fail to uphold the standard of a Fine Arts student that Kosei expects of him.The second is that, between schoolwork and artwork that keeps a roof over his head, there’s the fact that now that Madarame’s freedom is gone, so, too, are his assets. There’s years’ worth of art, countless portraits and still lifes and abstracts that need resorting, relabeling, reorganizing as it becomes less and less obvious which ones are truly of Madarame’s own creation.... it should have been better, after Madarame's Palace fell — but it's not, and it's up to Yusuke to pick up the pieces, and that's unfair.
Relationships: Kitagawa Yusuke/Kurusu Akira, Kitagawa Yusuke/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 4
Kudos: 150





	the long way home

**Author's Note:**

> this started as Yusuke's chapter of ["sobremesa"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17835677/chapters/42085082) — but then it got too long, and it got away from me, and now here we are with this fuzzily romantic mess.
> 
> i listened to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTvzifLr3jE) on a loop while writing this, if you're in need of some mood music :)
> 
> enjoy!

It takes more than a few days before Yusuke can move into Kosei’s dorms for real. There’s paperwork to be done, a willing relinquishment of custody from Madarame to the school, before a space can be found and prepared for him at all — but it happens, and Yusuke moves into the dorms with little fanfare a month after his guardian’s Palace falls.

It’s small — smaller than the attic that Akira has come to call home — but it comes with a bed, a sink in the corner of the room, and a mini-fridge. There is a small café on the ground floor that sells boxed meals and packaged bread for less than what you’d expect to pay at a convenience store, and a member of the school faculty lives in the dorm building just at the end of Yusuke’s hall.

In theory, it certainly looks like a decent set of accommodations — more than Akira had when he’d first moved here — but something about it doesn’t sit well with him. It’s no small matter, after all, to be ejected from one’s home. It’s not a simple thing, to be torn away so suddenly from everything you thought you knew and loved, only to be dumped in a cold and isolated place where you can no longer rely on anyone but yourself.

But Madarame is not Akira’s mother, and the teacher that lives in the dorm is not Sakura-san, and what was once hard for Akira might not be so for Yusuke.

It’s awkward to ask, though, as they toe the line between _comrades_ and _friends_. They fought together in that other world, sure — but friendship isn’t something that can happen so easily, even after a few weeks’ worth of sleepovers in Leblanc’s attic and a sentimental painting gifted to Sakura-san in thanks.

Still, Yusuke smiles. Between transferring small stacks of folded shirts from his duffel bag to the wooden chest by the closet, he says, “Thank you so much for helping me with this, Akira-kun. I couldn’t have asked for a better friend.”

It should be simple, to leave and rest assured that Yusuke will be fine in his new dorm room — and yet, Akira can’t help but wonder if, maybe, he’d unknowingly abandoned him to some terrible fate.

* * *

There’s more to Yusuke’s new living conditions, though — of course there is.

The first, perhaps the most important thing, is that Yusuke’s ability to continue living there free of charge is contingent on his scholarship. What Yusuke doesn’t say is that that scholarship can be taken away as easily as it had been given, should he fail to uphold the standard of a Fine Arts student that Kosei expects of him. 

The second is that, between schoolwork and artwork that keeps a roof over his head, there’s the fact that now that Madarame’s freedom is gone, so, too, are his assets. There’s years’ worth of art, countless portraits and still lifes and abstracts that need resorting, relabeling, reorganizing as it becomes less and less obvious which ones are truly of Madarame’s own creation.

“Nakanohara-san has been a huge help,” says Yusuke a week after he moves in, when Akira goes to see him in his dorm with a tupperware container full of curry from Leblanc. There are two easels propped up by the window, but Yusuke works in a sketchbook, now, black dust smudged across the side of his hand.

_Good_, Akira wants to say but does not. That Nakanohara is going so far out of his way to help, now, is yet more proof that changes of heart _work_. 

“We’re thinking of setting up a gallery,” says Yusuke, a wistful smile on his face. “For Hyuuga-san, Sensei’s pupil that committed suicide. It would take some time, though — we’d need to find and restore her work, find a venue, call her family from Yamagata, though who knows if they’d even want to come all the way here for something like this…” 

For a moment, Akira wonders what it must be like to have been Hyuuga-san — at the mercy of a teacher who would claim her work as his own, so far removed from home that she had nothing — no one — else. 

Madarame had confessed — collapsed to his knees on national television, sobbed apologies to anyone who would listen — but Hyuuga-san is still _dead_ — and Yusuke and Nakanohara-san are still here, picking up the pieces and cleaning up after their teacher’s mess.

“Though time is limited,” says Yusuke, sharply. “There’s exams, the school art show next month, and perhaps we’ll be lucky and have another target by then as well…”

—the curry that Akira had brought over the previous week sits untouched in the mini-fridge. 

“Yusuke?”

“What is it?”

But Yusuke looks so _earnest_, then, so ready to do _more_ that Akira can’t bring himself to say a word.

(Who is he, to take this power away from him after all that Yusuke has done to find it in the first place?)

“… never mind.” If there’s something in his voice that’s oddly strained, Yusuke says nothing.

* * *

—but Akira wakes, later, tangled in his bedsheets, his nightshirt clinging to his chest with sweat as his heart hammers painfully in his chest and he can’t breathe.

“What’s wrong?” Morgana asks, prodding him with his paw. “What happened? Are you okay?” 

“Nothing,” Akira answers in a shaking voice. “It’s nothing. I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”

“Liar,” says Morgana, but there’s no bite to it. 

Akira sits up, gingerly, and reaches for his water bottle on the floor. He sips at it listlessly, waits for everything to settle, and tries very hard not to think about what it means, that Madarame is gone but so, too, is Hyuuga-san, and Yusuke is still picking up after them — that Yusuke still can’t rest, even though most of the danger has passed.

“Madarame confessed,” says Morgana, “… so what’s the problem?”

Akira doesn’t respond — but in the space between his heart slowing down and his ribs releasing their chokehold on his lungs, as he lies back down, the answer comes to him — in the uneaten curry sitting in Yusuke’s mini-fridge.

* * *

Naturally, it all goes to shit one Saturday when Akira comes home from school and Sakura-san asks him, one hand clutching his phone tightly and the other running through his hair, “Hey, kid, you heard anything from Kitagawa lately?”

Their last Mementos trip had been the previous weekend, but Yusuke’s last response to the group chat had been days ago — and now that he thinks about it, Yusuke had looked _awfully_ tired back then. Something clenches unpleasantly his gut as he hastily calls out of work and dumps Morgana in the attic before racing towards Kosei.

“Yusuke!” he shouts, knocking on the door with one fist. A student in a deep blue school uniform stares wide-eyed at him, and his heart stutters in his chest for a moment at the prospect of this student he doesn’t know calling the security guard or the police.

Akira takes a deep breath, and tries again. “Yusuke? Please open the door.”

This time, Yusuke does respond — and his face is drawn and pale when he answers the door, shadows collecting under his eyes and his uniform rumpled. How long has he been wearing that uniform, Akira wonders? How long has it been since he last slept? Since he last set foot outside his room? “Oh, Akira-kun…” says Yusuke in a haggard voice. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

Akira swallows, and ducks his head. “I know. I’m sorry.”

But then Yusuke smiles, tiredly, and says, “Don’t be sorry.” He opens the door a little wider, and steps out of the way so that Akira can come inside.

It smells too strongly of paint. There’s half-finished canvases strewn about, half-finished sketches in pages torn out of his sketchbook littering the floor, a mess of pencils scattered across the unmade bed, a bowl of fruit by the window that’s started to go bad.

The cups of instant ramen sit untouched in the corner of the room.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Yusuke asks, and Akira notices, too late, that Yusuke is leaning too heavily against the chair where his hand rests. What if he were to pull that chair away from him? Would Yusuke fall? Could he stand at all without holding onto something?

Akira clenches his jaw, and resists the urge to tell him about the call that Sakura-san had received from the school — that Yusuke hasn’t been seen in class for days, with no word from him on why he was out to begin with — and Yusuke is not the same person now as the person who had threatened to call the police to get them out of Madarame’s shack, not remotely, but Akira can’t quite shake the worry that it could very easily happen again, comrades or maybe friends or no.

“I just…” he starts. His voice cracks a bit, so he clears his throat and starts again. “I just wanted to see how you were settling in.”

“Oh!” says Yusuke, his eyes brightening ever so slightly. “Thank you very much for your concern, but I’ve been doing well. A bit busy, perhaps, but it’s nothing that I’m not used to.”

Perhaps, if he were someone like Ryuji or Ann, it would be easier to say, then, that _this _isn’t _doing well_ — but Akira is not Ryuji or Ann, and so his frustration goes nowhere but further down, into crescents his nails leave in the palms of his hands as he clenches his fists so tightly that it hurts. He’s not quite sure which is more disturbing — that Yusuke apparently sees nothing wrong with this situation, or that he’s convinced that holing himself up in his room and throwing everything to the wayside in favor of working endlessly is normal — no, not just normal, but _expected_.

“Let’s go out,” is what Akira settles for, in the end. His voice is on the verge of shaking, and he has to take a moment to remind himself that his anger is not at Yusuke but at Madarame for putting him in this position, at Kosei for not noticing, or maybe noticing and yet doing nothing. “There’s this ramen place nearby that I’ve been meaning to try out—”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” says Yusuke, closing his eyes, “but I really need to finish this up first.”

The worst part of it is, apparently, that Akira can’t tell what it is that Yusuke needs to finish between the endless canvases and sketches and the rotting fruit by the window. “It’s fine,” he says. “We’ll be quick. Just a dinner break, and then—”

“Really, Akira-kun, just give me a few moments and then—”

“Yusuke, _enough_.” The words are out before Akira can do a thing to stop them, and he regrets them immediately when Yusuke stills before him. He takes a deep breath, and tries again. “When was the last time you ate something?”

Yusuke averts his eyes. “That’s not important.”

“How could you say that?” He doesn’t mean to shout, but it’s hard to look at Yusuke now and not wonder if, somehow, he’s gone back to that desolate old shack that Madarame had tricked him into thinking was the only home he’d ever need. But Madarame is gone, and he can’t reach Yusuke here, and Yusuke should _know_ that he shouldn’t still have to—

“I’ll eat once I’m finished with this,” Yusuke says, coldly. “I can’t afford any distractions right now.”

It’s not about the food — not really — and yet, when Akira grabs Yusuke’s wrist, then, the only thing he can think of is that he needs to get him out of this room, to that ramen place down the street where it is warm and there will be food — Yusuke’s pride and ridiculous work ethic be damned. 

“Akira-kun, I said _no_.”

It shouldn’t shock him as much as it does — but Yusuke’s voice is low and shaking, and his expression is frighteningly cold, and Akira finds himself recoiling before he can think to control the reaction. 

“I’m not trying to distract you,” he says, and hates how his voice shakes. Something heavy presses up against his eyes, but it would be the worst thing in the world if he were to start crying over _this_, of all things. Yusuke has yet to raise his voice, but he’s _cold_, too cold, and it sets Akira on edge anyway. If it were Ryuji or Ann here instead, they would know exactly what to say — but they’re not here, and Akira has never been good at dealing with these sorts of things on his own, but for Yusuke he _has_ to. “I just… You should eat something. Before finishing whatever it is that you need to do.”

He’s right about this — he _knows_ he is — so why does it feel like he’s messed this up beyond repair?

Yusuke sets his jaw, and turns away. “Leave,” he whispers. 

“Yusuke, I—”

“Or I’ll call the security guard.” And that, too, shouldn’t hurt as much as it does — but Yusuke _knows_ why that would be the worst possible thing to say to him. Akira had told him why, that first night in Leblanc.

This, a rational part of him speaks with Joker’s voice, is no different from before. It’s the same tactic that Yusuke had employed, earlier, to get them out of the shack that Madarame had tricked him into thinking was the only home he’d ever need. It’s more of a dismissal than an actual threat, meant to piss Akira off enough that he’ll leave Yusuke be, just this once — and if he were a stronger person, maybe, or if Joker were in control all the time, then Akira would see this for the obvious tactic that it is.

—but he’s not. He’s just Akira, and without Joker’s mask, he’s powerless against raised, angry voices and cruel words from the people he wants to call his friends. He releases him, then, and doesn’t say a word as he turns on his heel to leave the room — doesn’t say a word to Sakura-san, even when he asks how Yusuke is doing once Akira sets foot back in the café — doesn’t say a word to Morgana as he curls up under the blanket, and wraps his arms around his torso, and asks himself what the point was, of stealing Madarame’s heart, if it’s done nothing but hurt the person they wanted so badly to save.

* * *

For a long time, Akira doesn’t move. He sleeps, maybe, but even that is hard to tell for sure. The hours pass slowly, sluggishly, as he continues to curl into himself under the covers and thinks about everything and nothing.

It’s stupid, to let something like this affect him so much. He hardly has any right to feel this way when it was his fault to begin with: he was the one to push Yusuke, after all — but Yusuke hadn’t been eating, and he hadn’t been sleeping, and was Akira supposed to just sit there and let him continue driving himself into the ground? Was Akira supposed to _encourage_ him to keep doing so?

Madarame’s gone, but what good did that do Yusuke? Yusuke, who had been forced to leave the only home he knew, whose art had always been his entire life but somehow never quite so much as it is now — and wasn’t it supposed to be the opposite? Wasn’t it supposed to get better for him once Madarame was gone?

(What good are the Phantom Thieves, if they can’t even do this much?)

The sun feels a little warmer than it has in the past few weeks — and Morgana headbutts him gently in the back and says, plaintively, “Maybe you should eat something.”

If he had the energy to do so, he’d laugh at the irony. But he’s not particularly hungry — hasn’t been hungry since well before he went to Kosei — and so he pulls the covers over his head with a weary sigh and continues to lie there in a miserable heap. 

“Akira, come _on_.” Then there’s a weight on his shoulder, two paws kneading into him while two more press uncomfortably into his bicep. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing,” he answers reflexively, and maybe it would be more convincing if his voice didn’t sound so hoarse. “I’m just tired.”

“Liar. Something happened with Yusuke yesterday… I’m right, aren’t I?”

—and he really, really wishes it could be that simple — but how is he supposed to explain that, maybe, they should have just left Madarame alone? Madarame needed to be stopped yes, but not if it meant destroying Yusuke’s life in the process. Maybe Yusuke would have gone on for years, making art that Madarame would then claim as his own, but maybe that would have been better than this _uncertainty_ — he’d have a roof over his head, and food in his stomach, and someone he could call _family_, instead of this scholarship that could be taken away so easily should he fail, and with it the only home he has left. 

—and they did this. It was the Phantom Thieves that so utterly upended his life like this.

There’s a light _jingle_ as Morgana springs from atop him and makes his way… somewhere. Akira’s too tired to look — but then moments later, there’s the sound of heavy footsteps and more jingling, and then all of a sudden, Sakura-san’s voice snaps, “Hey, kid, what did I say about letting your cat downstairs?”

At that, Akira bolts upright and is immediately rewarded for it with a sudden throbbing at his temples. “Mona, what the _hell_?” he chokes out through clenched teeth. It would be a losing battle to argue now, though, so he closes his eyes and sighs wearily, as Morgana jumps back onto the bed and claws his way onto his lap. His head hurts, and his throat is painfully dry, and he wonders if it would make Yusuke laugh, to know that Akira has failed so spectacularly at the very thing he was trying to get him to do earlier. “I’m sorry, Sakura-san. I’ll… pay more attention next time.”

(—not that there’s a guarantee that there will even be a _next time_, but it’s an old worry and one he has more than enough experience quieting.)

Sakura-san looks at him with a strange look, caught somewhere between irritation and… worry? “Shit, kid,” he mutters. “Thought you were just tired… wait here a minute.”

Then Sakura-san stalks back downstairs, and Morgana settles into a vaguely loaf-like position on Akira’s lap. “You are a _bad cat_,” he says, glaring.

“I’m not even sorry,” Morgana retorts.

Akira sighs, wearily, and repositions his pillows behind him so that he can comfortably sink back into them without having to lie all the way back down. It wasn’t always like this, he thinks as he runs his hand absentmindedly down Morgana’s back. It’s hard to conceptualize a time when he _hasn’t_ been tired, but it doesn’t usually get as bad as this — then again, he’s never had to deal with things like traveling between worlds and changing hearts before. Nor has he had to deal overly much with people who call themselves his friends — whose friendship isn’t contingent on them participating in the same clubs or sitting near each other at school. 

—but friends are supposed to make you feel better, aren’t they? Even more so, friends who’ve very nearly died for you — and yet, the thought of them hurting, of being powerless to stop that hurt, of maybe being the person to put that hurt there — it’s too much.

Sakura-san returns then, a tray tucked in his arm that he then sets down on Akira’s lap as Morgana slides off towards the wall. Akira blinks at the curry and rice before him for one long, dazed moment, a polite refusal reflexively working its way to his tongue, and Sakura-san says, “Nope, none of that. We’re nipping this in the bud before it gets _really_ bad.”

… Sakura-san added chili powder to this. Akira can tell, because it cloys at his throat if he breathes in too deeply, too close to the plate. The first bite burns; the second is better. Warmth _blooms_ as it goes down — in his chest, in his stomach, in his fingertips as his appetite finally rears its head and he finds himself able to take another bite, and then another. 

(… it should have been like this, with Yusuke.)

“So,” says Sakura-san, just sharply enough that Akira can already tell that this isn’t going to be a pleasant conversation. “You went to see Kitagawa yesterday.”

“Mm.”

“How’d it go?” 

—only there’s nothing that Sakura-san can actually _do_ about this. Sakura-san can’t go back in time and force Madarame to be there for Yusuke. He can’t force Kosei to pay attention, to do something about the boy that wastes away in its halls in the name of _art_. He can’t open the art world’s eyes to the fact that the artist they praised so much should never have been Madarame. 

Sakura-san sighs wearily, and sits down at the edge of the bed with his back to Akira. “That’s too bad… I figured there’d be an adjustment period, but if he’s _this_ bad off…”

Akira pushes a lump of potatoes onto the rice with his spoon. “Can he… stay here?”

“I don’t have another attic I can give up, kid,” says Sojiro. “And even if I did, what good will that do him?”

_Better than that dorm_, Akira can’t quite bring himself to say. _Better than anything anyone has ever deigned to give him._

“But you know, kid,” says Sakura-san, “you can’t help people that don’t want to be helped. You try and do that, and they’ll just get frustrated and push you away… and then it’ll be worse than if you hadn’t done anything at all.”

“How could you say that?” It comes out harsher than he intended, and the rational part of him wonders if Sakura-san will be angry.

Sakura-san hums for a moment, before asking: “What was it like for you, when you first moved here?”

This, Sakura-san should already know: that it was perhaps the scariest thing Akira had ever done, to agree to live in a place where he knew no one, so far away from the only home he knew — when his mother hadn’t said more than a few words to him in months, when he couldn’t be sure she could ever look at him again — when he was dropped suddenly, without warning, in that other world and forced to _fight_.

“What did you need, back then?” Sakura-san asks.

He thinks back to those first few days — the sickening feeling of being yanked between worlds, the splitting headache as Arsene literally fought his way out — how things like _power_ hardly mattered, no matter what Ryuji had said, when Akira was still here, seemingly abandoned. He hadn’t been abandoned after all — he sees that now — but it remained hidden back then, behind the principal’s disapproving frown, and Kamoshida’s sneer — and Sakura-san’s half-hearted _I won’t hesitate to throw you out if you cause trouble_ with or without the roof he put over Akira’s head.

He’d wanted to go home back then, hadn’t he? But that’s not what he needed — he needed someone, anyone, to remain by his side as everything threatened to spiral out of control.

“If I had to guess,” says Sakura-san, “I’d say Kitagawa needs about the same right now. He needs to _want_ it, too, but that’s not something you can force so easily.”

Akira sets the spoon down, and lets his fingers curl around the covers. “What should I do…?”

“The only thing you _can_ do,” says Sakura-san, “is to wait for him to come to you.” Then, he raps his knuckles, almost but not quite scolding, against the top of Akira’s head. “And not wreck your health in the meantime.”

“Sorry…” Akira mumbles.

Sakura-san smiles, and it’s surprisingly gentle. “Trust him,” he says. “He’s going through a lot right now, and it’s not something you can do much to fix… but he’ll be back. And when he does, he’s going to need you.” Sakura-san’s eyes drift towards the window — there’s a bird perched just outside, small and brown and pecking at something under the glass — and says, “Oh, right, speaking of which…” Then he rises from the chair at Akira’s bedside to grab his wallet from his back pocket, and fishes out a small handful of bills. “Here, for the bathhouse,” he says, setting them down underneath Akira’s phone on the floor. “Go nuts with one of those special aromatherapy deals, or whatever.”

“You really should, you know,” Morgana chirps from his loaf-like position. 

Despite himself, Akira lets out a breathless laugh. “Thanks,” he says them both. “Sorry again for the trouble.”

“Next time will you _actually_ tell us what’s wrong before it gets this bad?” Morgana chastises him.

“Take care of yourself, kid,” says Sakura-san as he starts to head back downstairs.

“I’ll try,” says Akira, to both, and it’s the most he can promise for the moment but it feels like enough.

* * *

The time comes soon, too soon, as Akira peers out from the school rooftop the next day to find a red-faced Yusuke at the school gates, out of breath and clutching a plastic bag tightly in one hand. “He didn’t say he was coming over here today, did he?” asks Ann.

“I don’t think so?” Ryuji answers, but raises his arms over his head to wave at Yusuke anyway.

In an instant, whatever Sakura-san had told him the previous day evaporates from Akira’s mind, and something hard settles uncomfortably in his gut. “Go to him,” Morgana says, quietly, and _oh_, he can’t do this.

—but Ann smiles at him, oddly understanding even though he has yet to say a word to her or Ryuji about what’s happened, and plucks Morgana out of his bag. “C’mon, Mona,” she says. “Let’s get some sashimi.”

“Sashimi!” Morgana cheers.

“Oh, so it’s okay if _she_ takes you for sashimi, but if it’s me or ‘Kira then it’s sushi or bust?” Ryuji shouts, and it’s the last thing Akira hears before the door to the stairwell shuts behind him. His heart thunders in his chest, and it’s not from the exertion of running across Shujin’s campus because he can’t get to the gates fast enough—

—but Yusuke is still there. He holds the plastic bag out towards him, and says, “Here, ramen. From—From that place you’d mentioned.” Akira looks to the bag, at the small puddle of leaked broth at the bottom because at least one of the containers in there hasn’t been closed properly, and can’t find the right words. “I realize that this is an odd time,” says Yusuke, “but you were particularly adamant about eating at this place in particular, and I have yet to eat lunch today—”

Yusuke’s eyes go wide, then, as he clamps his free hand over his mouth. “It’s okay,” Akira says, and tries to smile but doesn’t succeed all the way. “Let’s go somewhere else?”

Yusuke does smile, though, and Akira wonders if this is okay after all. “Yes, of course.”

They end up going to a park, seated side by side on a bench. Yusuke lets Akira have the un-spilled ramen, while he lets his container sit in the plastic bag on his lap as he breaks his chopsticks apart and starts to eat. And for a long moment, Akira sits there and eats with him, saying nothing. 

The ramen, miraculously, has yet to completely go cold. It’s still too cold outside to not wear his blazer, but the sun has yet to set and the air is warm. For a moment, Akira lets himself wonder what summer will be like, in the city — if the Phantom Thieves will find another target, or even, simply, if he will make it through those months at all — if Sakura-san will catch him, should he fall, or if he’ll still be able to look at Ryuji and Ann and Morgana and even Yusuke, months later, and call them _friends_.

Yusuke looks down at his now half-full bowl, and lets his chopsticks fall to the side. “I owe you an apology,” he says in a low voice. “You’ve done so much to help me these past weeks, and yet I still… I still…” 

Akira exhales slowly, and stirs his noodles with his chopsticks. His mother would yell at him, if she were to see him now, but the spirals that form in the broth as the noodles swirl about are oddly soothing. “It’s okay,” he says.

“It’s _not_ okay—” Yusuke starts.

“I pushed too hard,” says Akira. “I made you uncomfortable. That’s on me, and you had every right to get upset.”

“I just…” Yusuke says, his voice cracking. “I just… thought it would be better.”

—and there’s no easy way to tell him that it _isn’t_ going to get better so easily, even with Madarame’s heart changed. It’s not fair, and it should be easier, but it’s _not_.

“I hate him,” Akira admits through gritted teeth. “I hate what he did to you, and I hate that just by getting out of your life, he’s made things so difficult for you. I hate that he can’t do more to fix this mess because he’s the reason it exists in the first place, and I hate how it’s still you that has to pick up after him.”

He stirs, and stirs, and stirs, and he’s going to ruin his ramen at this rate but he can’t bring himself to stop. “Akira-kun…” Yusuke whispers.

“You’re right,” Akira continues, and he hates the way his voice rises in pitch. “It _should_ be better. But it’s not, and it’s his fault, and _I hate him_.”

“… I don’t know if I agree,” Yusuke admits, quietly. “I should, but I don’t _know_.” He laughs, bitterly. “Sometimes, I wonder if maybe I painted an inaccurate picture of him to you all… but you saw his Palace, the same as I did, and yet…” His grip tightens around the takeout container, and his hands shake ever so slightly. “Right now, all I have left is this scholarship. I can’t deny that I would never have had even this much without Sensei’s guidance… that I can’t waste this opportunity that he’s given me.”

“You owe him _nothing_, Yusuke.”

“And I can see that, now.” Yusuke looks to him, then, his brow crinkling with something caught halfway between a frown and a grimace. “But if it were truly that simple, then there wouldn’t be this… this…”

Unbidden, Akira thinks of his mother coming home at the end of a long, long day — of the dinner he’d made splayed between them as they talked about everything and nothing. When was the last time she was able to look at him with anything but disappointment? When was the last time he was able to look at her and feel anything but grief? 

—and he has yet to tell Yusuke any of this, but he’d like to think that there’s a part of his new comrade, _friend_, who understands regardless.

“… homesickness?” he guesses.

Yusuke hums, considers it. “Yes, I suppose that’s correct.” Then he laughs, bitterly, again. “It’s sad, isn’t it? We can’t go home again. We don’t even have the option to do so.”

_Sad_ is one way to put it — but Akira’s had months for that solid ache to congeal in his chest. For Yusuke, though, the wound is still fresh.

Slowly, he tips over to the side, his head falling lightly onto Yusuke’s shoulder. “I’m here if you need me,” says Akira. “_Whenever_ you need me.” It’s not enough, not even close — and if it were Ryuji or Ann here instead, they’d have better things to say — but they’re not here, and it’s no excuse for Akira to not _try_.

—and as Yusuke lets his head fall on top of Akira’s, something in the both of them _releases_. “Thank you, Akira-kun. Thank you so much.”


End file.
